Tuesday, August 13, 2013

PS4 and Xbox One? No Thanks. Not Yet. Here's Why.

There's an excitement surrounding the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One from many outlets, gamers and consumers. It's for a legitimate reason, too, as this past generation has long worn out its welcome to many, simply because of how lengthy it has been. That said, we're in the camp that aren't absolutely ready to leap into the next generation with Sony and Microsoft's new home consoles, and we've prepared a brief list of reasons why.


- Current launch lineups for both systems aren't overly appealing to us.

One thing that we don't really care for in the industry is the majority of Western developers churning out shooter after shooter. We've suffered genre fatigue for ages now, and it doesn't look like things will be changing any time soon according to what we've seen of the launch libraries so far of both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

Particularly with the Xbox brand, one reason we stopped enjoying the kinds of titles that came out for the Xbox 360 is because the majority were tailored towards shooter fans, racing fans and Kinect owners. This trio of undesirable types of games turned us off of the Xbox 360 brand despite loving Microsoft and third-parties' output in the early years of the system. With the Xbox One, it really doesn't look like the types of genres being represented the most (or at all) are going to change any time soon. Yes, we dig Killer Instinct and Dead Rising 3, but are they worth $499 plus cash for both games and Xbox Live? We don't think so.

Dead Rising 3
It's a similar issue with the PlayStation 4. We have games that interest us for Sony's new system, such as inFamous: Second Son, Knack and The Order, but to us they're not worth the $399 price tag, and again all of the money involved with paying for the games and the ability to play online.

- An expensive investment

As it stands now, the PlayStation 4 is rather cheap in price for what you're getting. However, $399 is still a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, and that's without purchasing an extra game or two, as well as paying for PlayStation Plus. The money that could go towards a new piece of hardware, a game for that new hardware and paying to play online could go towards multiple current generation games, Wii U titles, and Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita software.

It's especially expensive when you look at the Xbox One, which will launch sometime this fall or holiday season for $100 more than the PS4. Again, unless you just want the Xbox One to sit in our entertainment systems looking pretty, we'll have to purchase a game to go along with the console, as well as pay our yearly Xbox Live fee just to use applications that aren't behind a paywall else.

Case in point, both consoles are too expensive at this point, and the money that would go towards both could be used for current generation titles.

- Last generation's horrid console failure rates have us hesitant

While games seem to be getting better and better all the time, the opposite seems to be happening to console hardware. We don't mean that consoles are becoming less powerful; we mean that consoles are becoming less reliable, if this past seventh generation taught us anything.

All three major home consoles this past generation died on us-- the PS3 (Yellow Light of Death), the Xbox 360 (the Red Ring of Death) and the Nintendo Wii (which doesn't have an "of Death" to call its own). This is particularly alarming with Nintendo, because we've owned so many of their consoles, and the Wii was the first to break down. Mind you, we did play the system a lot, as there were many games we enjoyed on the system, contrary to popular belief.


The most egregious of console failures was the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death. Microsoft's response to their complete incompetence in building reliable hardware was "you know, things break." Well, that's 100% true. Our trust in Microsoft building hardware that will last has been broken as well, so to say that we're going to be in line to purchase a new console, especially Microsoft's, at launch is an absolute lie.

- Too many great games to play already

The beauty of being a multi-console owner is that you have a vast and expansive library of games to choose from. Our backlogs are already full of entertaining titles that we need to get to, so why do we need to purchase new consoles just to add to our first-world problem of having too many games to play?

That's not even talking about the seventh generation games that are still not out. There's titles like Grand Theft Auto V, Saints Row IV, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Batman: Arkham Origins, Battlefield IV, Watch_Dogs, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Rayman Legends, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and the list goes on. While it's true that some of these games will be available for the eighth generation as well, we won't be buying a PlayStation 4 or an Xbox One to play those titles. We'd be buying next generation consoles to play next generation games.

Grand Theft Auto V
Sony especially is making it difficult to want to make the leap from the PS3 to the PS4 because they are still releasing some big titles around the holiday season for the PS3. We're referring to games like Puppeteer, Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus and Gran Turismo 6. Why upgrade to the PS4 when there's still several captivating games still being released for a console we already own and love?

Then there's the issue of backwards compatibility, which both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One lack in a traditional sense. We can't even play our old games on either console to catch up, so that means making space for not just our new eight generation platforms, but also our old seventh generation consoles to play our current gen games on.

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Are there any other readers of this article out there that will be waiting it out regarding the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One? Post your reactions and thoughts regarding this article in the comments section below.

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